I must therefore repeat that the first form of myth which spontaneously arises in man as an animal, is the vague but intentional subjectivity of the phenomena presented to his senses. This subjectivity is sometimes quiescent and implicit, and sometimes active, in which case it may arouse the fear of evil, or the hope of physical pleasures.
As in man the reflex power slowly and gradually grows—although at first in an exclusively empirical form—so he slowly and gradually accepts the first form of fetishism, which consists in the permanent and fixed individuation of a phenomenon or object of nature, as a power which he reflectively believes to be the artificer of good or evil.
In this stage it is no longer the phenomenon actually present which arouses the apprehension of an intentional subjectivity, while its image and efficacy disappear with the sensible object; the phenomenon, or the inanimate or animate form, is reflectively retained by the memory, in which it appears as a malignant or benignant power. In a word, the first stage of fetishism, which is the second form of the evolution of myth, is the universal and primitive sense of myth in nature, which man alone is capable of applying permanently to some given phenomenon, such as wind, rain, and the like, or lakes, volcanoes, and rocks, and these remain fixed in the mind as powers of good or evil. In the earlier stage of myth the scene is constantly changing, while in the latter, certain objects or phenomena remain fixed in the memory, exciting the same emotions whether they are present or absent, and to this consciousness we may trace the dawn of worship.
Ethnography affords plain proofs of the fetishism which preceded the civilization of many peoples, and among those which still remain in the stage of fetishism we can trace the primitive form of a vague impersonation of natural objects and phenomena.[28]
As we have already seen, every animal and unfamiliar object is in this first stage of fetishism regarded as the external covering of a spiritual power which has assumed what is believed to be the primordial form of the fetish; this fetish takes the place of the natural phenomenon, and is believed to be capable of exercising a direct subjectivity which is vague but perfectly real.
We pass from this first form of fetish to the second, namely to the veneration of objects, animals, plants, and the like, in which an extrinsic power is supposed to be incarnated. Many ages elapsed before man attained to this second stage of fetishism, since it was necessarily preceded by a further and reflex elaboration of myth, namely, the genesis of a belief in spirits.
Herbert Spencer and Tylor are among the writers who have given a masterly description of this phase of the human intellect, and history and ethnography have confirmed the accuracy of their researches and conclusions. The shadow cast by a man's own body, the reflection of images in the water, natural echoes, the reappearance of images of the departed in dreams, the general instinct which leads man to vivify all he sees, produced what may be called the reduplication of man in himself, and the savage's primitive theory of the human soul. Originally this soul was multiplied into all these natural phenomena, but it was afterwards distributed by the mythical faculty into three, four, five, or more powers, personifying the spirits. This belief in a multiplicity of souls in man is not only still extant among more or less rude peoples of the present day in Asia, Europe, Africa, America, and Polynesia, but it is also the foundation of the belief of more civilized nations on the subject, including our own Aryan race. Birch and others observe that the Egyptians ascribed four spirits to man—Ba, Akba, Ka, and Khaba. The Romans give three:
"Bis duo sunt homines, manes, caro, spiritus, umbra."
The same belief is found among nearly all savages. The Fijians distinguish between the spirit which is buried with the dead man and that more ethereal spirit which is reflected in the water and lingers near the place where he died. The Malagasy believe in three souls, the Algonquin in two, the Dakotan in three, the native of Orissa in four.
Since a fetish, strictly so called, is the incarnation of a power in some given object, it must be preceded by this rude belief in spirits and shades. Such a complex elaboration takes time, since it involves a previous creation of powers, spirits or the shades of men; these lead to the belief in independent spirits of various origin, which people the heavens and all parts of the world. Hence arose the belief in transmigration, the necessary prelude to the theory of the incarnation, which was ultimately constituted by fetishism. The comparative study of languages shows that including the Aryan and Semitic races, the belief in spirits was developed in all peoples, and in all of them we also find a belief in the transmigration of souls.